Communicating Science
I read often that scientists are not very good at communicating to the public what they study. This does make sense to me, since many of them are naturally very good at researching and studying and writing for their peers.
I sort of bumped into this when I was talking with a past professor and I shared I was looking to read a recent book on origins and how that topic connects to my Christianity. He expressed frustration that so much debate goes on about origins, at the expense of thinking about and acting to care for the environment / creation.
While I agree with him that a better use of time would be to change our actions to care for the earth, the reality is that many Christians get stuck on the issue of origins (creation, evolution, etc.).
If scientists, and Christian ones at that, are unable to effectively share their knowledge and research with the public, people will be only given information from the popular media, which by and large, does not do a good job of ‘reporting’ on scientific results. This is understandable as they write to sell papers, their media outlets have specific biases, and many reporters have little scientific training.
I find therefore, Origins, A Reformed Look at Creation, Design and Evolution to be very, very good. Having a science background, I found the authors to be methodical and clear. They did not seem to try to twist issues to fit their conclusions, nor did they tiptoe around conclusions that seemed problematic.
We need more of this from good Christian scientists. Sadly, this takes time away from researchers and many are uninterested in the reporting aspect. Maybe we need more writers with science backgrounds to read the research that is being done and to write it up in ways the public can read and understand it.